Articles
LINGONBERRY BREEDING AND CULTIVATION (VACCINIUM VITIS–IDAEA L.)
The initial breeding material originated from the province of Småland in Sweden.
The plants were collected by the late danish professor Sven Dahlbro.
From these plants we received open pollinated individuals that later resulted in two lingonberry cultivars. (Sjöstedt, Trajkovski 1984). Sussi was the first one released in 1986 and was two years later followed by Sanna.
Sussi is spreading (10 20 cm height) and suitable as a ground cover while Sanna shows an erect habitus (15 30 cm height) and is more adapted for commercial cultivation and mechanical harvesting.
Another important attribute is the differences in yield.
Sanna shows to be more productive compared to Sussi.
Yields of up to 575 g from a singel shrub has been noted from Sanna the fourth year on micropropagated plants.
The average production of well developed plants is 300 400 g/plant and that would be more than 10 ton/ha (40 000 plants/ha).
The berries are picked in the end of August and the weight of 100 berries is approximately 40 g for both cultivars.
They do not remont.
Plants of Sussi and Sanna propagated from cuttings seems to produce less rhizomes (or no rhizomes) compared to micropropagated plant material.
In the breeding work we use native Vaccinium vitis–idaea from different parts of Sweden.
Moreover, seeds and plants have been received from Russia, Latvia and Lithuania.
A crossing program was begun last year.
Characteristics of primary importance are: high yield; large fruit size; erect habitus; easy to propagate by cuttings because micropropagation is still an expensive method; even maturity and good resistance to diseases.
With reference to diseases, little leaf disease is rather frequent on cultivated lingonberries in Sweden (Nilsson, 1974). The symptoms are reduced leaf size, stunting, proliferation, absence or malformation of flowers.
The little leaf disease is caused of mycoplasma-like organism (Tomenius, Åhman 1983).